Doki Doki Literature Club! is a visual novel developed by Team Salvato. It was released on September 22, 2017 for Microsoft Windows, Linux and OS X, and later on October 6, 2017 for Steam

its a secretly horror

notes from me-this game has honestly changed me in some way dunno how but in a good way if you want here's a link to the endings WARNING there's a few gruesome scenes so skip ending 1 and 2 skip to the very end for a beautiful song

SPOILERS AHEAD

In Doki Doki Literature Club! the protagonist (whose name is provided by the player) is invited by his childhood friend Sayori to join their high school's literature club. There he meets the other members of the club: the snide but peppy Natsuki, the shy and timid Yuri, and the perfectionist club president Monika.[6] The protagonist starts to participate in the club's activities such as writing and sharing poetry, and starts getting to know the four girls more closely.

While preparing for a festival to invite more classmates to join the literature club, Sayori admits that she suffers from depression. As the day of the festival approaches, Sayori's usually bittersweet poem is replaced with a dark and morbid note repeatedly telling someone to get out of her head. When Sayori doesn't answer texts, the protagonist rushes to Sayori's home, only to find that she's hanged herself. The game suddenly begins to glitch, and the player is forced to start from the beginning, only Sayori is absent and any remnants of her presence appear to make the game glitch and break down.

Once again the protagonist meets the literature club (minus Sayori) and gets to know Natsuki and Yuri more through sharing and reading poetry. However, more and more unsettling events occur, with normal dialogue being replaced by darker content. Multiple other glitches occur, such as the game rewinding after the protagonist finds Yuri cutting herself and the game refusing to accept conversation selections that don't favor Monika. Before the festival, Yuri presents the protagonist with a poem consisting of illegible writing and bloodstains; after confessing her love to the protagonist, Yuri stabs herself multiple times in the chest and dies. Upon discovering Yuri's body, Natsuki becomes ill and flees. Monika then apologizes and deletes the "character files" for Yuri and Natsuki, causing the game to restart once again.

Upon starting a new game, the protagonist is placed in an ethereal room with Monika seated across from him. Monika explains that she's aware that she's trapped in a game and that she is able to manipulate the game's files to alter characters' personalities or erase them altogether. She confesses her love directly not to the protagonist, but to the person playing the game. This sequence continues indefinitely until the player manually enters the game's directory and deletes Monika's character file. Upon doing this, the game glitches once more and Monika panics as she's deleted from the game's world. However, she accepts that loving the player means letting them be happy, so she accepts them living happily without her.

The game starts over once again with Sayori, Yuri and Natsuki all alive and normal, playing out similarly to the initial playthrough (minus Monika). Shortly after meeting everyone, though, Sayori explains to the player that now that she's the president of the literature club, she knows everything about the game and what the player did.

Monika suddenly intervenes once more, claiming she's changed her mind, and the game glitches again. Monika then speaks audibly to the player (the only spoken dialogue in the game) and sings a song she had been preparing, which plays over the credits (which display all of the scenes available to witness in the game). The game ends with a thank you note from Monika, stating that she has disbanded the literature club because "there is no happiness" in it.

If the player had loaded previous saves or began new playthroughs to view every scene with Sayori, Yuri and Natsuki without witnessing Sayori's initial suicide, rather than Monika's intervention, Sayori thanks the player for trying to help all of the girls. After the credits the player is then presented with a thank you note from the game's developer.